


flesh and bone

by timetrees (orphan_account)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 06:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14207253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/timetrees
Summary: Moments from Taako and Kravitz's lives, and how they connect.(Ravens, sometimes, followed him, and sang through their crooked beaks as they did so. Kravitz didn’t mind so much.) / (“I don’t,” he said, and stopped. What did he not want? To live without her? To cast a wicked cool spell knowing she wouldn’t be around to yell out a compliment?)





	flesh and bone

**Author's Note:**

> kraaaavitz and taaaaako yeaah

Daylight had waned to the point of complete obscurity, but no follower of the Raven Queen feared the dark.

Darkness was not a mystery, or a danger. It was a fact, like life and death and the earth and the sun. Children who feared the dark turned to fear all else. There was no point of fearing death at the same time as fearing life.

That was what Kravitz’s mother told him one night, when he shifted under his blankets and begged for a spell to keep his quarters light.

It didn’t help.

“Fine,” Kravitz – who was not yet called Kravitz, because he was a child – muttered, pulling the covers _over_ his head. If he had to live in darkness, at least it would be of his own volition.

His mother, despite her words, produced a flame and let it hang in the air as she left. Kravitz smiled; he could see the light through his blanket.

He hummed an original tune before falling asleep.

In the morning, the sun woke him up, shining through his window until he couldn’t bare to keep his eyes closed. He didn’t make his bed, because he was a nine-year-old, and even a child of two followers of the Raven Queen was bound to break rules.

He slid out the door of his bedroom, which was very small, just a bed and some space on the floor to put his things.

His mother was asleep at the kitchen table. She’d started to prepare breakfast, though she was not a great cook, but had abandoned her post after getting maybe halfway through some tuna sandwiches.

Kravitz finished them himself, and put one on a plate that he set in front of his mother. Her head was down on the counter.

It was seven ‘o clock, and Kravitz’ father usually slept in, so there was no point in fetching more bread or waiting for him to come down. Kravitz would be done with his admittedly short walk to school by the time his father awoke.

And by the time he got home, his father would have seen his unmade bed and untidy room…

Kravitz put down his sandwich and went back to his room.

Followers of the Raven Queen were kind of sticklers for the rules. He might as well adopt the habit while his brain was still forming.

It took six minutes to make his bed, because the fitted sheets had came off some time in the night, and then a minute and a half to stack his magic books and novels into one pile and shove his stuffed rabbit doll into the corner.

His mother was still sleeping when he entered the kitchen again.

She was, of course, not sleeping. He found that out when he came back home from school and found his father sitting on the floor, hands clasped around an ornate, wooden carving of a raven skull.

“Dad?” he said, moving in front of his father.

His father’s head didn’t move, but his dark eyes slid up to meet Kravitz’s. He shook his head.

Kravitz thought, then, that his heart had stopped. He didn’t know until much later what that was really like.

* * *

No one quite knew how elves aged. Sometimes a human year was an elf year, physically, and other times a human decade was an elf year. There was a general guideline from dwarf and elf ages to the ages of other, younger-dying species, but it wasn’t law and most elves didn’t put any stock in it.

For all intents and purposes, however, Taako was eight years old when his mother died.

She hadn’t been a terribly awful mother, he recalled later, though he’d had no others so maybe he wasn’t the best judge. She worked, more after Taako’s father left them, and taught them what cooking and baking she could to a child. She was a tired elf, always closing her eyes for ‘just a moment’ in armchairs and sleeping in other odd places.

She was distant from Taako and Lup, but they were so close to each other that they couldn’t find any will to care about that. Their father, a drow who’d wandered from Underdark, left a few years into their tumultuous marriage. Their mother spoke ill of him any time she could.

Sixteen years after she died, Taako realized he did not know her name.

They found her like this.

Lup went into the kitchen first, pulling her hair up in a bun as she talked about something she’d learned in school. She’d been throwing her voice, obviously intending for their mother to hear her words, but there was no reply. That wasn’t strange – their mother wasn’t usually talkative when she wasn’t being scornful of their father, the gods, and her own luck.

“Mom,” Lup said, and then again, when she registered their mother lying on the floor, against the kitchen counter, hands dropped, limp, to her sides. Her mouth was open and her eyes were half-closed.

Taako stepped behind Lup, peering over her shoulder.

“Get back, Taak,” Lup said, and then moved forward, slowly leaning down to look at their mother more closely.

“What’s wrong with her?” Taako whispered.

“I… uh…” Lup looked back at him. “Something.”

“Something’s wrong with her?”

“Yeah.”

Taako shook his head, his ears flopping around as he did so. “Obviously something’s wrong,” he said. “She’s not moving. And she doesn’t look asleep.”

“Maybe she’s sick again,” Lup said. She was referencing a time where their mother had disappeared for a while and came back to tell them she’d been sick in the hospital. “Should I poke her?”

Taako pulled out a wand he’d stolen from a teacher in his school and gave it to her.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

Taako shrugged.

Lup put the wand to their mother’s cheek and slid it down. Their mother didn’t move.

“Taako,” Lup said. “I don’t like this.”

“Okay,” Taako said. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know.” Lup shook her head a few times, like she was trying to get leaves out of her hair. “Maybe we can ask the neighbors.”

“Dewarlo is weird,” Taako said. “He keeps trying to steal my shoes. I’m gonna steal _his_ shoes.”

“You do that,” Lup said. “I was talkin’ about the other one. The nicer one, who’s old.”

“Oh,” Taako said. “Okay. You go do that. I’m gonna stay here and watch her so she doesn’t get up and leave to the hospital without us.”

“Again,” Lup muttered, and sauntered off.

Taako sat down.

The first aunt they stayed with arrived that night.

* * *

Kravitz was fluent in the language of music, but only average in most of the instruments he knew. He borrowed a violin from a family friend, and knew it well enough that nobody screamed at him when he played, and he’d played the piano from a young age so he was better at that than any other.

Kravitz’s voice was one of his biggest assets. Early on into his magical schooling, he’d imbued his magic with his voice, though bards were made fun of as much in teenage circles as in adventurer’s.

Ravens, sometimes, followed him, and sang through their crooked beaks as they did so. Kravitz didn’t mind so much. The music from them was nice, although he’d become disillusioned to his goddess the Raven Queen since his mother’s death and the plague that had hit many of the people in his village.

He was sure the Queen knew this, so he didn’t know why her ravens still followed him, but he didn’t ask anyone. Those in his church would just proclaim it a blessing, or maybe a curse, and Kravitz couldn’t deal with that kind of attention.

Other attention, the kind not tied to gods or their followers, was fine. Kravitz played for coffee shops, sometimes, and he would try to get into bars with little to no success. People liked him, and he liked that. He liked being admired, though he was modest enough to not admit it out loud.

He liked to be appreciated, and he liked to be useful. It was something his mother had both scolded and praised him for.

Kravitz’s father, the senior Kravitz, didn’t play music. He had at some point, as he was the one who taught Kravitz the piano. Since his wife’s death and then the sickness, though, he’d put in even more time to his churchgoing and his Queen.

“Queen,” Kravitz said to a raven, because he was sure she could hear him through it. “I don’t understand why things have to be this way. I know we embrace how we love and lose, but it just seems…”

Unnecessary.

The raven croaked, but gave no words in response.

“That’s fair,” Kravitz said. He tapped his fingers on the part of the bench beside him in a rhythm that had been in his head for a while.

Music and religion lived in Kravitz’s head. Faith, however, was harder to find.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz said.

He didn’t know exactly what he was apologizing for. His waning faith in the Raven Queen, maybe, or his bitter thoughts about life and death and sometimes the people around him. Kravitz hated the cold, bitterness he felt inside him. He wished for warmth and love and life, that he could have that all the time, but he was scared that he would find that he couldn’t.

Kravitz walked home in the dark.

* * *

Taako knew he was smart, and he loved it. He knew he was attractive, and he loved that, too. He and Lup were set for the stars, and nothing was ever going to fucking stop them, no matter what happened.

“Lu,” he said, sprawled on a couch and flipping through a book held up by a Mage Hand. “You think we’ll get in?”

“Duh,” Lup said from outside of the room they were in. “We’re the best. We’ve been all over and learned all our shit we can, so we gotta, uhhhh, get more, I guess.”

“Well, maybe they’re racist,” Taako said. “I heard not a lotta elves get into the Acad.”

“I think maybe they just don’t want to,” Lup said. “We’re better than all those other elves, anyway. How many Drows you see getting the highest fucking initiation scores for the Academy ever?”

“Pssh,” said Taako, who had gotten the second highest. “You cheated.”

“Did not. I just had a more ethical solution to some’a their jams.”

Taako rolled his eyes and twitched an ear, a signal to end the conversation that Lup couldn’t even see. Lup walked into the room, wearing bright yellow overalls and ––

“That’s my hat!” Taako said, jumping up and reaching for it. The mage hand disappeared and the book dropped to the floor.

“It looks better on me!” Lup said, even though it totally didn’t, it was _Taako’s_ hat. He’d actually stolen it from their aunt on their father’s side, but that wasn’t the point. “You’re way too into this hat, my man. It’s not even _good._ My snapback gives me charisma stats.”

“Yeah, to skaters, maybe.” Taako stopped trying to force the hat off her. His great-aunt’s voice rang in his head – _Elves who fight their siblings don’t get pie. They get death, when their sibling inevitably betrays them after getting fed up with it._

Hearing that as a child had actually been sort of scarring. Not as scarring as the rest of Taako’s childhood, but the scale there was so fucked up it couldn’t even weigh a kitten.

Lup sat down on the couch and patted the seat beside her, where he _had_ been sitting before he’d gotten up to steal his hat back. Taako returned.

“I’m just saying if they pick you and not me,” Taako said. “Then, like, you can go, I guess. I mean, I’ll probably die out here––”

“You will not.” Lup glared at him and put her face close to his so he could see her eyes, narrowed and fiery. “And they won’t. You’re, like, legit just saying that to keep your brand up. You know we’re the best.”

“We are.” Taako smiled a smile he wouldn’t show anyone but his sister and put an arm around her neck. He put his head to her shoulder, which was not covered in impossibly yellow denim. “Can we shit talk someone?”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” Taako leaned away from his sister and flipped to lie on his back, calves over Lup’s thighs. “I want to be chaotic. All my spell slots are full, let’s go out. Drink something. Get in a bar fight.”

Lup crossed her arms, wearing an exaggerated face to show him she was thinking about it. “Maybe,” she said. “I guess I could set some stuff on fire.”

“Hell yeah you can!” Taako flipped to his feet. “We’re ninety-six, baby! Livin’ young, dyin’ hard!”

“Is that a slogan for your rock band?” Lup asked, amused.

“No. Shut up. I punched that guy in the face, that band’s off.”

“You punched an _orc_ in the face?”

“Broke his nose, too.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.” Taako went to grab his coat, a mossy green thing that was close to dragging on the floor when he put it on. It had about fifteen pockets, which was great for pickpocketing. “You know, it would be so easy to steal from people if they were dead.”

“Holy shit, Taako.” Lup put a hand on his shoulder. “What is wrong with you?”

“What?” Taako frowned. “I’m not saying we kill them, chill out. I’m just saying we should make like Pokemon Go and find some dead bodies, y’know?”

“I absolutely do not know,” Lup said, but she was grinning. “Only if they died of a heart attack and we find them on the floor or something. Or if they look really evil, not in a racial profiling way but, like, if they have a dead puppy in their pocket.”

“So, if they’re a veterinarian,” Taako said. He opened the door. “Should I charm us so no one can hear us?”

“Nah,” Lup said. Then, in Drow Elvish: “And vets don’t keep dead dogs in their pockets. I’m pretty sure they have animal graveyards for that.”

“I read a book about an animal graveyard,” Taako said.

They continued to talk like this for a while – Lup trying to be the moral guide between the two but failing to hide her giggles at Taako’s joke about a dead half-human, Taako exaggerating his own supposed plans for the future to make the conversation more interesting. Eventually they arrived at a human bar, one who didn’t quite understand or maybe care about elf ages.

“Hey there, hombre,” Taako said to the bartender. “I’ll have whatever the fuck. What’s going on over there?”

Taako was referencing a crowd of humans, hunched over a long oval table and talking among themselves in a sort of resigned tone of voice. Most of them were wearing black, so it was more of a dark blob than a crowd.

“After funeral,” the bartender grunted. He poured Taako something he didn’t say the name of. “You the elf that almost burned down a church last week?”

Taako blinked.

Lup sat down so slow it looked like she’d been hit by a freezing spell.

“I don’t care,” the bartender added. “Nobody likes death worshippers. I’m just saying there was almost a scandal over there.” he shifted his gaze to Lup, who was eying away awkwardly. “Fantasy Jesus Christ, you two are the same kinda person, aren’t you.”

“We’re elves, not people,” Taako said. It was a joke, and Lup laughed, but the human bartender didn’t.

“Whatever,” Taako huffed. “Who died? And what church did you set on fire?”

“Oh, some old man,” the bartender said. “He was a pillar of the community, I think. We’re expecting ten more people to come into that crowd over there.”

“When I die,” Taako told Lup. “I want the funeral broadcast to the entire goddamn world, and then I want you to set my body on fire, and then I want to inhabit your body with you, just for kicks.”

“Fuck that,” Lup said. “My body’s my body, loser. Get your own.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Taako said extravagantly. “But you will set my body on fire. But not normal boring fire, the cool kind, with different colors.”

“Don’t talk about you dying,” Lup said. “We’re ninety-six, we’re young and, uh, healthy.”

“Sure,” Taako said. “Very healthy. I’m just saying, in a few hundred years or whatever, you gotta make my funeral cool.”

“Will you make _my_ funeral cool?” Lup asked.

“I’m dying before you. Didn’t I just say that?”

“You can’t plan who dies first, Taako.”

“Yes, you can.” Taako downed his entire glass of what he now knew was vodka. “Oh, yum. Key lime.”

“That was vodka,” the bartender said.

“Right,” Taako agreed. He looked back at Lup. “Look, if you die first, I won’t be able to plan your funeral, because I’ll be dead, too. Like, two days later, I’ll just keel over and die without you. You know this.”

The bartender looked like he wanted to ask if that were an elven twin thing, but he wisely hung back.

“Fuck off, Taako,” Lup said, without much heat. “You’re a fully realized creation, you can live without me.”

“I guess,” Taako said. “It wouldn’t be any fun, though. What would I do? Go around cooking in caravans on my own? Everyone I have sex with will see my tattoo and ask who has the other half, and I’ll have to say she’s dead.”

Lup frowned. “You don’t have a tattoo,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but I will,” Taako said. “Do you want to get a tattoo with me? They’ll be matching, with like, some kind of weird pun or joke. Maybe half my face, half yours?”

“You’re awful,” Lup said. “I’m not getting your face tattooed on my butt.”

“I was thinking hip,” Taako said.

“That isn’t the point.” Lup grabbed his drink and held it up, shaking it a few times in front of the bartender. She switched to Drow Elvish. “Don’t make me get _worried_ for you.”

“Why are you worried?” Taako asked, matching the language. They’d learned Drow Elvish in two years when they were thirty-five-ish and struggling to live with their father in the Underdark. “It’s a joke, I’m not saying I’ll kill myself.”

“I don’t want you to make jokes about you dying at all!” Lup said. The bartender gave her a new glass of vodka. “Why the hell is he putting vodka in a full sized glass?” she added, in Common.

“We get really heavy drinkers in here,” the bartender said.

“Y’all are messed up,” Taako said, as if he had not just downed the entire glass in one gulp. He was just living his truth. In Drow, he said, “I’m not Mom, or your weird pen pal you had when you were forty. I’m just fucking, trying to live my life, I can make jokes about me dying if I want to.”

“I don’t like thinking about you dying,” Lup said, in a low voice. “Enough of our family has died on us already, I don’t want you to be one of them. You’re like my _soul_ , Taako, I don’t want to think about my life without you!”

“Neither do I!” Taako said, a little too loudly. He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to think about living without you. I love you. I gotta die before you so I don’t have to do that, assface.”

Lup stared at him for a while, jaw set, shoulders drawn in. Finally, she looked away, still tense, and said, “What the actual fuck is wrong with us?”

“This is what happens when you learn to only depend on your sibling,” Taako said. “We don’t know how to be real people, we only know how to be a team.”

Lup sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s lay off the funeral talk. Those guys are glaring at us.”

“Not like they can understand us,” Taako muttered. “Hey, what do you assholes want? I’m having a heart-to-heart with my sister!” he added to them in Common.

Lup chugged her vodka. “Let’s get wrecked.”

* * *

Kravitz lived in the streets of a place that would, someday in the future, be called Neverwinter. Later it was called Highwinter, but that wasn’t the point. He did, technically, have an apartment, but it was smaller than any house he’d ever lived in and he spent most of his time in the still standing church of the Raven Queen.

He was twenty-one years old. He could legally drink anywhere, which was nice, because he found that he did like wine. He still played music, though the piano his father had owned wouldn’t fit well in his apartment, so he mainly played in the church. Some days he was happy, and some days he was so confused and felt so sacrilegious that he couldn’t stand to look at his own reflection.

How arrogant he’d been in his youth, to doubt life and death, to ask a raven directly what the point of it all was.

There was a family of elves and humans and half-elves in the church. Kravitz was playing a song that had no name, only chords, and they swayed to the music in different ways. Kravitz loved to watch the way music took effect on those who listened to it.

“Having a good night?” he called to them. Most of the churchgoers had left already, eager to get to their houses before it was too dark to be safe, but that one family had stayed after hours.

“Yes,” the human man called. “You’re really good at that piano, you know. You get paid for this?”

Kravitz almost laughed, but he toned it down to a more polite chuckle. “No, I just do it,” he said. “It’s what I love. And I love this church, so I do it here for free.”

“That’s great,” the elf woman said. “You know, our son–” she pointed to a half-elf sitting on the floor, “–is turning six in a month. He was asking about lessons. Do you think you would help out?”

“Of course,” Kravitz said. Something inside screamed _ask to be paid, please, you need to survive to next month, and the next, no matter what your religion says._

“Wonderful!” the elf smiled. Her teeth were impossibly white, but maybe that was just how elves worked. Kravitz hadn’t met many. “We’ll set up some meeting times next time we see you here, is that alright? We’ve just joined, but I think we’re going to be going regularly.”

Kravitz did not say, _I have been going regularly all my life and I am tired of accepting death. I want to be like the rest of humanity and curse the gods when my family dies, or talk about what I would do if I were immortal. I want to love my religion, but it’s hard._

“Sure,” Kravitz said. “I’ll be here… most of the days, really, I spend a lot of time here. I’ll usually be playing music, but they have me read oaths sometimes, too.”

“Oh, so you’ve been here a while,” the human said. “That’s really cool.”

“All my life,” Kravitz said, and smiled, as charming as he could be. “I think I’ll, um, take my leave now. I’ll see you.”

The family wished him goodbye, though they did not leave after him, and Kravitz walked through the door thinking _maybe this is it._

The walk to his apartment was long, and Kravitz had been sitting at the piano bench for so long his legs ached when he moved. He stopped maybe halfway through and leaned against a cobblestone wall, closing his eyes for just a moment.

He could sleep now, if he wanted to. He was tired enough to fall asleep standing.

There were footsteps sounding some place not too far away, but he didn’t open his eyes. The place that would be Neverwinter was dangerous at night, but Kravitz did have magic, and he didn’t even need to use a wand.

The footsteps were coming closer.

Kravitz thought about the Raven Queen. One day, she would collect him, and she would see through him. He was not a blind follower of her’s; he doubted every move he made in her path, and she was sure to know that. Did she disapprove of his thoughts, his actions, his life? He wanted to be as devoted as his parents had been, but something inside him got stuck whenever he tried.

The footsteps went past him, and then stopped.

Kravitz thought, _I am sorry. My time on this earth has not been enough. I wish I could be happy. I wish I were as good at believing you as I am at music. I wish. I wish._

There was one barely audible footstep, and then a whisper of something he couldn’t understand, and then the blackness came.

 

He woke up in bursts. He was on the ground. He was in a chair. He was surrounded by people, faces indiscernible, voices unrecognizable. They were talking to each other, but he could not understand what they were saying.

 _What_ , Kravitz thought, _is going on?_

They’d pulled off his cloak and taken off his shoes. Kravitz hoped that if he got out of this – though the chance of that seemed to dwindle every time he woke up – that he would find the cloak again. The clasp on it was a heirloom from his mother, a raven’s head carved from metal, and his father had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday.

Of course, Kravitz had more important things to worry about than that.

There were whispers, there were always whispers, of sinister things brewing at the edges of society, people trying to achieve godhood, wizards sacrificing lives for their magic, necromancers doing… something.

Kravitz had a special sort of disdain for necromancers.

He passed out again, and then woke up. One of his captors was staring at him, gray eyes wide open.

They said, “I think he was a Queen follower.”

Dimly, Kravitz recognized the past tense. So he was going to die, then. He was too disoriented to recognize his thoughts on the matter.

“Whatever,” another one said. “It doesn’t matter to us. That church is crazy.”

The gray-eyed one shrugged. “Just saying it’s not the best person to sacrifice.”

Sacrifice?

Kravitz passed out once more.

 

When he awoke again, things were different. There were no necromancers surrounding him, the dark walls of whatever room he’d been kept in were gone. In fact, it seemed he was in no room at all. He was standing in a void.

He heard a caw, and started, and then more joined the first. Ravens, everywhere, feathers flying and voices croaking. Where was he? Was he dead?

“Kravitz,” a voice said. It was not a raven, but it felt like it could be. Where was it coming from? It did not seem disembodied.

A woman stepped out, except she wasn’t a woman. Her body was that of a woman’s, but her head was that of a bird’s, giant beak and beady eyes and all. It was a raven wearing a woman’s body. It was a woman wearing a raven’s skull.

“No,” Kravitz said, or maybe thought.

He did not want to die, but he was sure it was too late for anything to be done.

“You’re an interesting one,” the raven woman said. She had a strange accent – was it Cockney? “You tried so hard, dear, didn’t you?”

Kravitz was too shocked to kneel. He needed to kneel, he was not a disrespectful follower, just a confused one. He was…

“You know who I am,” the Raven Queen said. “And I know who you are. I’ve been watching you, Kravitz.”

Watching him.

Kravitz remembered the ravens, who followed him across the street as he walked. He remembered the way they croaked when he talked to them, when he thought they didn’t care what he was saying. Ravens, following him, watching him, inspecting him, seeing every move and every blasphemous thought he uttered.

“My Queen,” Kravitz said, shakily. “I’m.”

_Sorry._

“Don’t be,” the Raven Queen said. She shook her bird’s head. “You’re the most interesting follower I’ve had in a long time. Most of my followers follow me and my rules blindly, thoughtlessly. They’ve either accepted the ways of reality or they think somehow they’ll be spared when their time comes. You, however, questioned it.”

Kravitz had spent so long thinking that was a bad thing.

“I thought,” he said, and stopped. He didn’t know what he thought. “My Queen, what happened to me? Why am I… why are you _speaking_ to me?”

She cocked her head.

“You’re dead, Kravitz,” she said. “Killed by the same people that defy my laws, the laws of life and death.”

“Necromancers,” Kravitz said, the disgust apparent in his voice. “I thought so.”

Somehow, she chuckled. “They sacrificed your soul for their own gain,” she said. “Or they tried to, anyway. I interfered.”

She’d stolen his soul from necromancers and guided it to her own kingdom.

Kravitz didn’t know if he was supposed to be grateful or crying with grief.

“Thank you,” he said.

Her feathers ruffled. “It’s just what I do,” she said. “But, Kravitz, I do have an offer for you. One I haven’t given to anyone in a very long time.”

She said _very_ like it was a grave thing, like he was either being awarded a medal or a curse.

“What is it?” Kravitz asked, and winced, because that was not how you spoke to any god, much less your own.

The Raven Queen was silent, head still cocked, her beady eyes glinting as she watched him. Finally, she spoke. “Work with me.”

Kravitz heard the _for me_ she didn’t say.

“Be my emissary. There are too many mortals that act against my laws. The world is becoming unbalanced, and has been for a long time… I want you to stop it.”

Kravitz stared, and swallowed nothing.

“I cannot grant you life,” his Queen said. “Your heart will not beat. Your breath will not quicken. No blood will run beneath your skin. You can never return to your old town, or speak to your remaining family again. Your existence will be hunting down liches and necromancers and other despicable beings. Nothing else.”

There wasn’t room to argue, but Kravitz could not keep his mouth shut, even in front of a goddess. “My whole existence?” he said. “Surely I can’t fight necromancers every second of the day. Even if there are many of them, there might not be an… opportunity to fight them. Don’t we need to be smart about it?”

The Raven Queen blinked – did normal birds blink? – and stayed silent for five long seconds before making a cawing noise that was too much like a laugh to be anything else. “So you want to play your music?” she asked. She put a hand – the backside of which was covered in short, soft-looking feathers, just barely darker than her skin – to rest on the top of her beak. “You want to go to human bars and interact with mortals?”

If she was already laughing at him, there wasn’t much use to deny it.

“Sort of,” Kravitz admitted. “I know I’m not alive, but…”

The Raven Queen calmed herself. “You amuse me,” she told him, like it was a grand compliment. “Sure. Play your music, talk to your kind. Be tactful – don’t speak to anyone who knew you when you were alive.”

“Of course.”

“Now,” the Raven Queen said, serious again. “You should get started on those necromancers who killed you, shouldn’t you?”

* * *

Taako was shaking. Taako wasn’t moving. Taako was there, in a physical, tangible form. Taako did not exist.

Lup was dead.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Taako knew she would return. This wasn’t their first rodeo with death, but it was her first time dying. He hadn’t died, either. Maybe it didn’t work with elves. Maybe the universe would play a cruel joke on him and not bring her back in the next cycle, or the next. Maybe he would wait a decade for his sister to come back.

He wished he could say he would wait forever, but he didn’t think that was the case. He was so used to being one half of a whole.

It wasn’t a totally healthy way of living life.

Magnus was standing, and then kneeling beside Taako, placing a hand on his shoulder. Taako wanted to lunge away, to shove him off. He couldn’t be touched. Nobody could touch him. He was––

“Taako,” Barry’s voice said, and Taako sobbed, because his sister’s dead body was right in fucking front of him and she was _dead_ , the world was ending in two months and his sister was _dead_.

They’d never been apart for two months before. She certainly had never been _dead_ for two months before.

“We need to move,” the captain said, voice commanding despite it’s gnomish squeakiness. “Someone– Taako, can you get up on your own?”

Taako didn’t answer, half out of spite for being talked to like a child and half because he did not think he actually could.

“I’ll carry him,” Magnus said. “Taako, can I carry you?”

At least he asked. Taako shook his head, violently, and flopped to one side. The ground was cold on his face.

He could hear what Lup might say – _love the drama, ‘ko_ , and then she’d kneel next to him and take his hand and hers and whisper something ridiculous but comforting and he’d be okay, because she was with him. She was with him.

She wasn’t with him.

Taako’s ears were downturned and pressed to hard to his skin that he could feel his earrings denting the skin beneath his robe. He pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped an arm around them.

The rest of the IPRE was murmuring among themselves, clearly not sure what to do with him. They’d spent years together, but still Lup was the only one to really understand him. Taako liked it better that way. He might have to spend the entire discernable future with five other clowns, but they didn’t have to see into him.

That was Lup’s right, even if it annoyed him sometimes.

Lup.

“Fuck,” Taako muttered. He didn’t get up.

“You should carry him,” someone said, presumably to Magnus, since he’d already offered. Magnus didn’t respond.

Merle peered over to look Taako in the eye. “Am I supposed to do something with him?” he asked.

“You’re a cleric, Merle,” Davenport said. “Can– can clerics heal panic attacks?”

 _Fuck you_ , Taako thought.

Merle made a noise that was sort of a verbal shrug.

Taako’s mouth was so dry.

“Taako,” another voice said, calmer but no more comforting. “We need to go back to the ship before they come back.”

“No,” Taako said.

Were they supposed to do a funeral for someone who would only be dead for two months?

Merle’s retreated, out of Taako’s line of sight. Magnus tried to pull him up. Taako deadened his weight.

“Wow.” Magnus stopped pulling. “You know I’m super strong, right? I can pick you up anyway.”

Taako stopped resisting.

Later, in the ship, he was sipping chicken soup, and it wasn’t too bad, so probably Magnus had made it. He was surprisingly adept at cooking; he wasn’t at Taako’s level, of course, but he made good tea and decent cookies most of the time.

Taako’s eyes hurt. He’d probably been crying, but he couldn’t remember anything but the feeling of loss and anger.

Barry sat down next to him.

“Hey there, bud,” he said. If it were anyone but Barry that called him _bud_ after a panic attack, Taako would have smited them then and there, but Barry called people bud in practically any occasion, so he didn’t bother.

Taako grunted.

Barry continued. “We only have a couple months,” he said, like it mattered how long Lup was gone. She was gone. He was going to learn to live without her, and the selfish part of him – which was a big part – didn’t want to.

He wanted to keep her to himself and never let her go.

He was going to punch her in her goddamn face when the next cycle started. And then he was going to hug her, and then he was going to cry.

Barry looked down. “I’m not good with death, either,” he admitted. “I think it’s why I started studying necromancy in university. I guess I wanted to… not bring people back, but understand how they die, and what happens to them. You know?”

Taako knew that when their aunt told him how his mother died, he spent days in the library researching poison and venom and suicide and depression. He knew that when their great-aunt died during the night, he’d curled up next to her and ignored the dawning feeling that she would never scold him again, and then when Lup found him the next day, he lied and told her that she’d been alive when he found her.

Taako was not good with death. Taako was used to death, sure, but he was not good with it.

“I don’t,” he said, and stopped. What did he not want? To live without her? To cast a wicked cool spell knowing she wouldn’t be around to yell out a compliment? Most of his jokes relied on another person, a straight man or foil. What if he wanted to pickpocket someone? Lup was meant to distract them as he did so.

_I don’t know what to do without her. I wouldn’t let her plan for this._

“Yeah,” Barry said. He slid down against the wall. “Me too, I think.”

* * *

Kravitz had not really connected to a living being in many, many years.

In the beginning, it was easier. He’d still considered himself one of them, really; the gravity of his situation was still not yet upon him, not really. He went to bars and joked around with other musicians there. He got in fights and won with power he hadn’t been capable of before. He was human.

Once, maybe fifteen years after dying, he wandered to a town on the edge of the place he’d lived. There was a man, standing at a street corner. With a shock, Kravitz recognized it as the little boy who he’d been meant to teach. He had a remarkably similar face as his father’s.

The former child said, “I heard Kravitz died. You know, the one back north? The temple of the Raven’s guy, you know.”

Kravitz swallowed and stepped back. This was against the rules.

“My dad said his son was supposed to teach me music or somethin’,” the man said. “I dunno what happened to him. I was a kid, anyway, I barely remember.”

Kravitz opened a rift behind him and left, and never ventured near his old town again. He didn’t ask the Raven Queen about his father, though he was sure she knew of his death. There were rules, and people like him were especially meant to follow the rules.

And yet here he was, getting attached.

The Raven Queen had not yet caught on – or maybe had just not commented – to his increasing number of… get togethers with Taako the elf wizard. Kravitz didn’t know if Taako actually had a last name; there were three listed in his book of bounties.

Taako was beautiful and eccentric. The eccentricity was not necessarily a bad thing, though it was inconvenient at times. He had an odd habit of pretending he was far less intelligent than Kravitz knew him to be.

“Why don’t you,” Kravitz started, and then stopped, because he wasn’t sure what exactly he was asking. Taako was lying against him in a regal bench that didn’t really belong in a fantasy fast food place.

“Don’t I what, darling?” Taako asked. Taako called him darling a lot; Kravitz thought it was maybe a joke. “Speak up. Be forceful.”

Kravitz didn’t particularly want to be forceful towards Taako, but he said, “Why do you hide yourself?”

Taako laughed. Kravitz knew it wasn’t his real laugh, or at least not his truest one, because the last date they’d been on had involved Kravitz making a fairly ridiculous joke that Taako had laughed so hard at that his giggles turned into hiccups and snorting and it was really quite cute, if excessive.

“I don’t hide myself,” he said. “You think I would hide this bomb-ass outfit?”

This was a joke; Taako was wearing bright purple tights and yellow denim overalls. It looked good on him, of course, but it wasn’t the most expertly designed thing Kravitz had ever seen.

Kravitz laughed politely. “I mean, you kind of… you make yourself out to be less than what you are, sometimes. I don’t get it.”

Taako turned to face him – now he was straddling Kravitz’s lap, which was incredibly embarrassing – and smiled a smile that was no teeth and completely dead. “Sometimes peeps are jealous of my talent,” he said, lightly enough. “Now and again I try to, uh, tone it down a little. You don’t know, any of the people in this Wendy’s might have seen me on TV and is gonna–” he laughed a little manically, “–kidnap me for my cooking prowess.”

“Well, I think you could take them,” Kravitz said, because he didn’t have anything else. He didn’t think comforting Taako was a good idea, because he was Taako, and he was not exactly upset.

“Thanks,” Taako said. He looked back at the rest of the restaurant. “Why the hell is service taking so long?” he called.

“My gods, Taako,” Kravitz said, face burning. “You can’t _do_ that. They’re busy! There are people everywhere!”

“Well, you’re the one who choose Wendy’s over Burgerville,” Taako said. “Dumbass choice.”

“Didn’t you say you were a chef?” Kravitz asked. “Why don’t you cook something?”

Taako stilled at this, though he hadn’t been moving before. His eyes were far-off, looking at something in the distance, or nothing in the distance.  “Because,” he said, “people are jealous of my talent. I told you.”

The server called Kravitz’s name.

“Does Wendy’s take reservations?” he asked Taako.

“You’re so interested in this Wendy,” Taako said, in a strangely endearing voice. “Why don’t you date _her_ instead?”

Kravitz laughed, and then slowed down as he walked. Taako, in an odd move, matched his pace.

“Are we dating?” Kravitz asked.

Taako gave him a _look_. The look said something like ‘what do you think we’re doing right now?’.

Then Taako said, “I mean, I don’t know what you think we’re doing right now, but if you wanna dump me, you should probably do it before I make you pay.”

Kravitz put a hand to his face. He was smiling.

“I think I’ll wait,” he said, and hoped that was okay.

Taako smiled, too, more reserved than Kravitz, and looked down. He bumped his shoulder with Kravitz’s.

“I want to eat everything,” he said.

“I was just going to get a burger,” Kravitz said. Taako laughed. Kravitz smiled. The night continued mostly like that.

 

On another night, another date, Taako invited him in. Kravitz had only been inside Taako’s home once, when he’d greeted him after finding out that he’d died eleven goddamn times. Nothing had really changed except for the lights were on.

“Magnus and Merle aren’t home?” Kravitz asked. He’d never questioned why Taako was reluctant to tell them about he and Kravitz, but he wasn’t going to press it. He didn’t think Taako was closeted, though the concept wasn’t as cut and dry as people thought. It didn’t really matter to him either way, so there was no point in asking.

“Don’t say their names,” Taako said. “Merle put a houseplant in here and then started– ugh. Disgusting. I kicked him out. Magnus is out earthside, I dunno what he’s doing.”

Kravitz frowned. “What… did Merle do with the houseplant?” he asked, not sure if he really wanted an answer.

“Man, he has some kind of fetish and it’s messin’ with my jam,” Taako said. “He’s an old man. They’re plants.”

“I guess he doesn’t have enough game to score any real people,” Kravitz said. He was proud of himself when Taako laughed, almost too loudly, at the comment.

“I think he was married once,” Taako said. “But he doesn’t really talk about it, and it’s not like I go around sharin’ bout my ex boyfriends, so I’m not opening that can of snakes.”

“I think it’s worms,” Kravitz said. Taako didn’t respond.

They were going through the living room that Kravitz had once sat in and into a room that was certainly Taako’s bedroom. There was clutter everywhere: his wizard’s hat, three bags of varying bright colors, a broken wand, some dice in a jar, and all other sorts of miscellaneous objects.

“Your room looks great,” Kravitz said, obviously lying.

“Thanks,” Taako said. “I cleaned.”

With a horror, Kravitz realized that he didn’t actually know whether or not Taako was kidding. He had some faith in his boyfriend, so he just nodded a few too many times and glanced around, conveying an uncertainty as to what they were doing.

“Oh, yeah,” Taako said. “So, I was just gonna, I dunno, show you around? And we can have sex, if you want. But what I was really going to show you was this.”

He reached into one of the brightly colored bags and pulled out a kazoo.

“I’m great at this,” Taako told him.

“Oh my gods,” Kravitz said. “Why.”

“Listen, man, I’m the kazoo master and you need to know that early on.” Taako blew into the kazoo, making one short note. “I play jazz on this thing. Like, Daybreak? Did that one. Anyway, I refuse to apologize for my musical talent.”

“You know I actually play a few instruments,” Kravitz said, unable to help himself.

“Oh?” Taako gave off the impression that he already knew this.

Kravitz’s mouth felt dry all of the sudden, though his body did not work the way a living being’s did and so he probably didn’t have the capability to have a dry mouth. “Piano,” he said. “My father taught me that. And violin. I hate guitars. I tried a recorder, once, because I found it on the ground, but it broke.”

“Hundreds of years to learn,” Taako said, “and you know two instruments.”

Kravitz huffed without any real annoyance. “But I’m really good at those two,” he insisted.

“I’m goofin’. Why do you have guitars?”

Kravitz twisted his mouth. “It’s a dumb reason.”

“People call me dumb all the time. What the reaz?”

“They’re not fancy enough.”

Taako, who’d sat down on his bed, jumped up and hit the top of it with a thud. He was laughing. “Man, why’d I get a bunk bed?” he wondered aloud, still snorting. “I– you gotta, you gotta keep that aesthetic going, then, Krav?”

“It’s a lot of work to look this good,” Kravitz said. “I can’t help it if I have to keep it up. It’s been my thing for centuries!”

Taako giggled and flopped over onto his stomach. “I have a ukelele,” he said. “I actually stole it from a dude, but I know how to play it. He was way too much of an asshole to play the uke’, anyway.”

Kravitz couldn’t help but gaze at him. Even just the back of his head was nice to look at, as sappy as that was. His hair looked nice, even if different strands of it were tinted with colors he’d once dyed them to be. It just made him look even more interesting.

“You’re being quiet over there,” Taako said, voice muffled.

“Just thinking.”

Kravitz felt alive. 

* * *

They talked about Kravitz once, late into the night, hands clenched tightly together and legs over each other. Lup had came to help Taako move out of his place on the moon, because he damn well was not going to live on Lucretia’s new BoB headquarters if he had any say in it. He’d done that for a year already.

Lup hadn’t said he should find a way to forgive her, which he was grateful for. He couldn’t do it. Taako wasn’t one for letting go of grudges, and he had a hell of a good reason to hold this one.

“He’s kinda,” Lup said, and snickered. “Like, a dork? I was on a Raven mission with him, and he kept… switching accents… and then we asked him about it, later, and he said something about the Raven Queen having an accent? I couldn’t tell if he was kidding. I thought he wasn’t, and then I asked where Cockney’s from, and he said _Cockland_ , and I… that is not a place. That’s not a place, right? I don’t know Faerun too well.”

Taako wondered how much she’d heard from his date with Kravitz. She’d described her time in the umbrella after the Day of Story and Song, and it sounded awful, but she’d never said how _much_ she sensed, if it was all the time once she got the hang of it or if she fought for conciousness every second.

“I’ve spent, like, a decade here and I still only know a few places ‘round here. Neverwinter. Uh… Goldcliffe. Y’know, I should be better at this, I was a traveling chef.” Taako shook his head.

Lup laughed. “Anyway, he’s sort of a loser. Is he goth?”

“You’re the one that works with him.”

“You’re the one who’s _dating_ him, loser.” Lup pushed him, but not enough to actually move him. “How’s that going?”

“Oh, good.” Taako slid down the wall he was leaning on. “I kind of hate it. Like, I’m crazy about him, but I hate that I am. Does that make sense?”

“You have commitment issues,” Lup said.

“No,” Taako said. “I want to commit. I’ve never wanted to commit to anyone. I always thought you were crazy when you and Barry got serious, but I sort of get it now, and I’m going to die thinking about it.”

Lup’s smile was annoyingly knowing. “You _like_ him,” she said, like they were twenty-two again. “You have a crush on your boyfriend. Has that ever happened before?”

“No,” Taako said.

“Yes, it has.” Lup tilted her head like she was thinking about it. “That guy – the one on the train. You had a crush on him. You giggled.”

“I was a child!” Taako said, scandalized. “Children don’t have feelings. I thought his hat was cool.”

“You think the worst hats are cool,” Lup said in a sighing kind of way. “Taako, is this not what you want?”

“It is what I want,” Taako said. “I think. I’m just not used to it. He’s… he really likes me, which is, duh, I’m great.”

Lup laughed and nodded obligingly.

“But he likes me for who I am, not the showboat-y, dazzling Taako the general public gets,” Taako continued. “Last month, he came to my house when I was drunk and I cried on him and he just… was cool with that?”

“Why were you crying?” Lup frowned intently.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Drunkenness plus weirdos going to jail. Anyway, I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“Hm.” Lup considered this. “Well, I for one know he’s a dork about you. And I also know you’re a dork about him. So maybe just live your life as a dork? Not that hard considering you’ve been one for, oh, two hundred years now.”

Taako shoved her hard enough to make her roll to the other side of the bed. “Oh, fuck you,” he said, but he was laughing, because it was Lup. “You’re awful.”

“Oh, you for definitely love me,” Lup said. She rummaged through a bag she’d probably – no, definitely – gotten from Barry. It was made out of denim, and Taako wanted to die.

“That is the worst bag in existence,” he complained. “Why does Barry own that? Why did _you_ take it?”

“I needed something to put my shit in,” Lup said, as if that were not the main reason people had bags. She pulled another, smaller bag from the denim monstrosity. On it was a sheep with the words DRUGS spelled out in bubbly letters. “Weed?”

“Oh my god, yes.” Taako made grabby hands. “Give– give it. The last week I smoked was from Merle’s arm, and that was just fuckin’ weird.”

Lup dropped the bag onto the bed. “Merle can grow _weed_ on his _arm?_ ”

“Like, instantly.” Taako shook his head. “You think Pan’s a stoner?”

“Well, he is one with nature.” Lup unzipped the bag and pulled out a pipe and a small plastic bottle. “I found this in a box of my old stuff from the ‘blaster.”

“Oh yeah… you made that, right? That one year where you stayed with a bunch of glassblowers. What happened to them?”

“Uh, besides getting eaten by the Hunger?”

“Well, yeah.” Taako snatched the pipe out of her hands and inspected it. “Wasn’t there some kind of traitorous, uh, feud? Or was that some other group’a stoners?”

“Nah, that was them.” Lup took the pipe back and started to load it. “Hey, man, I haven’t smoked in a decade, my tolerance is probably mad low, right?”

“Gods,” Taako said. “Is that how it works? With a new body and all?”

Lup shrugged. “We’ll see,” she said. “You can have the first hit, cuz I’m nice.” she handed it to Taako.

“No lighter,” Taako said, as was tradition.

“Don’t need one,” Lup said, as was tradition. She lit a flame from her finger and waved it in front of his face. “My fuckin’ _blood_ is lighter fluid.”

“At this point, that’s probably true.” Taako put the pipe to his lips and beckoned her with a finger. She lit it. Taako breathed in for probably about way too long and breathed out in her face. “Ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha,” she repeated. Then: “Hey, you got a call goin’.”

“Oh, fuck.” Taako lunged for his phone, which was on Lup’s side of the bed. “Oh, it’s _him_.”

“The death man?”

“The– yes, him. Fuck. Give me more.”

Lup laughed shrilly and gave it to him. Taako took another hit, and then another smaller hit.

“I don’t need weed to talk to him or anything,” Taako said. “Just I think he wants to meet up and I think it’ll be funny to see how long it takes him to figure it out. I mean, being drunk is soo obvi, but weed? Not always. Taako can hide that shit pre-tty damn well.”

“Do you think Kravitz will smoke weed with us?”

“Oh, shit. Maybe.” Taako accepted the call. “Hey there, death man.”

“Well, that’s not the worst thing you’ve called me.” There was some shuffling from the other side and a faded raven’s caw. Technically Taako didn’t know if it was a raven, but it was a good bet. “Do you want to, um… hang?”

He said it _so_ awkwardly.

Taako laughed despite his best efforts not to. Lup mouthed ‘dork’ at him.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m at my moon place with Lup, wanna swing by?”

“Sure,” Kravitz said, with the air of a man who did not want to be made fun of by his new coworker slash boyfriend’s twin sister. “I’ll be right there, then.”

Kravitz smelled the weed, so deceiving him didn’t really work.

“It’s not fair that the dead can smell,” Taako said. Kravitz smiled at him like a man in love and wedged himself between Taako and where Lup had set her denim bag.

“Sure,” he agreed, and rested his head on Taako’s shoulder. Then his eyes flicked to Lup, who was lighting the bowl for herself. “Can I… have some of that? I haven’t smoked weed in centuries.”

Taako cackled in delight. “Fuckin’ totally, my dude.”

“I _guess_ ,” Lup said, but she was grinning as smoke wafted out of her mouth. “Here you go, man. Don’t choke on it.”

He did choke on it, and Taako and Lup laughed so hard they choked, too.

Life was pretty fucking good.

**Author's Note:**

> tell me your thoughts! thanks to the taz fic writers server for all those word wars. got this out in a couple days.  
> edit: so honestly i'm not really pleased with how i did this? especially taako's parts. i know what i was trying to do – foreshadow and play with the future knowledge that lup was going to die/be gone – and i think i executed it kind of clumsily. this is my first ever fic for the fandom, so considering that, it's not too bad, but i'm just not the proudest of this piece. anyway! comment any concrit if you want. better fics out soon, maybe.


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